MIT develops holographic, glasses-free 3D TV

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The masterful engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are busy working on a type of 3D display capable of presenting that elusive third dimension without any eye gear. We say “elusive” because what you’ve been presented at your local cinema (with 3D glasses) or on your Nintendo 3DS console (with your naked eye) pales in comparison to what these guys and gals are trying to develop: a truly immersive 3D experience, not unlike a hologram, that changes perspective as you move around.

Today’s 3D technology falls short in a number of ways. The most obvious is the need for special viewing glasses that may be uncomfortable to wear, darken the on-screen imagery, and are prone to annoying finger smudges that are a bear to wipe off.

Nintendo’s 3DS console is one such device that dispenses with the need for eye gear by using two layered liquid crystal diode (LCD) screens to create the illusion of depth. Offset images create a sense of perspective, while alternating light and dark bands emanating from the bottom screen ensure your eyeballs only take in the images they’re supposed to at any given moment. It’s a serviceable recipe for rudimentary glasses-free 3D, albeit on a small scale suitable for handheld consoles.

In order to produce a convincing 3D illusion, MIT's three-panel technology requires a display with a 360Hz refresh rate.

What the researchers at MIT have come up with is a more sophisticated way to paint a 3D scene that changes perspective as you move around. It does away with the need to sit in a fixed, optimal position (think of how in a movie theater, everyone views the same perspective regardless of where they sit), and in fact could ultimately encourage changing your viewing angle, depending on how creative developers get with the technology. To give you an example, imagine leaning left in your chair to spy an enemy crouched behind a crate in a first-person shooter (FPS).

The project is called High Rank 3D (HR3D). To begin with, HR3D involved a sandwich of two LCD displays, and advanced algorithms for generating top and bottom images that change with varying perspectives. With literally hundreds of perspectives needed to accommodate a moving viewer, maintaining a realistic 3D illusion would require a display with a 1,000Hz refresh rate.

To get around this issue, the MIT team introduced a third LCD screen to the mix (pictured above). This third layer brings the refresh rate requirement down to a much more manageable 360Hz. More importantly, it means short term application of this technology is possible. Currently, TV technology maxes out at 240Hz, so a high-speed panel in the 360Hz range isn’t all that far-fetched.

The researchers plan to present a tri-panel prototype display at Siggraph. In the meantime, it’s worth carving out three and a half minutes of your time to watch the video below, which explains the technology in visual detail.

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That “develops” in the title should be “developing” but other than that I have no complaints on this article or its awesome content. This is the kind of 3D that I might actually want to jump into. The only other kind is for gaming, when one REALLY wants to immerse themselves in the game world a la VR, with head-tracking, stereo-sound 3D glasses.

I think just about everyone over the age of 25 has wanted a pair of VR goggles since they were a kid :)

some_guy_said

I seriously doubt that an upgraded version of today’s consumer LCD at 360 HZ would do any good – Due to the advertised image scan refresh rate being faster than the LCD pixel response times. I expect it will need a response time to match the frequency – Or then it will just smudge and streak LCD2, and LCD1 will be unviewable – Ruining the 3D affect.

The true response/refresh rate that your actual (consumer) LCD TV is really capable of outputting is somewhere in the range of 80-120Hz, REGARDLESS of what is advertised.

You would want a maximum 3 millisecond response time if it is perfectly calibrated, but preferably 1-2 ms.

OLEDs will probably be a better and more natural fit – having higher inherent response times, Rather than being required to re-engineer an LCD to actually match the advertising in both principle and reality.

Long story short – Implementing this with current technology is a little more of a challenge than it appears at first blush – But it still looks very promising.

I’m sure they do. I was just pointing out the disconnect between the MIT guys using real world numbers and consumer product numbers from marketing hype.

The gap between what they have and what’s in the market is larger than it appears at first.

Brandon I

I don’t think you understand how this works. This uses each LCD panel (no backlight here) to selectively blocks parts of the panels behind it. OLED is an emmisive display that generates light. Stacking OLED wouldn’t give up much except three planes that you could light up pixels on. They’re not remotely interchangable.

And, this isn’t new tech, this is an improvement on parallax barrier displays.

Here’s the MIT site, cause, you know, why would they include that in the article: http://web.media.mit.edu/~mhirsch/hr3d/

some_guy_said

You are right, I didn’t think about the OLEDs being emissive. Edited to correct.

This is supposed to give a brightness and display update rate improvement. Rather than using a fixed pinhole grid/slots for the parallax barrier, they use two LCD panels. Since they have LCDs instead of pinholes, they can adapt the barrier and let light from nearby pixels through.

wayne evans

I agree, but I can do better than what you’ve seen so far here in the US or abroad…I can do all this with better depth and real time, a device that fits in the palm of your hands. and could retail for less than $500..Mit are just a bunch of groupies, thinking their doing something new.

Marc Guillot

Very nice. That’s the kind of 3D that I would be interested (no glasses, no fixed view points, ability to show different perspectives as long as you move around, …).

If I remember correctly, somewhat similar glasses-free screens exist already, just look at companies like tridelity or aloiscopy…

chojin999

This pretty old tech. MIT was once known for advanced new groundbreaking tech development..but recently it seems that they got worse and worse. A lot of failure projects like this one. Do they seriously think that this could be any improvement over currently selling fake stereoscopic glass free 3D screens and projectors?
This is not holographic tech. There are way more advanced true holographic techs being developed that don’t require 4 LCD stacked trying to simulate it.

wayne evans

LCD has too much polarization

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